larry@VLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV (10/11/88)
>Self-awareness may, in turn, be defined as the capacity of a sentient >system to monitor itself. Over the years I've heard many people object to self-referential systems for a variety of reasons (in AIList, for instance, in the recent discussion of linguistic paradoxes.) Some of this seems to based on emotional grounds, others on the fact that we have no analytical theory to handle self-reference. Yet self-reference seems to be at the core of much human thought, certainly of consciousness, so we must develop such theory. ------------ >Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind) >is very persuasive when he argues that consciousness is not >required for use of human language or every-day human activities. Human thought seems to be a hierarchy of cooperating (and sometimes competing processes). Consciousness seems to have a (the?) major role of integrating these processes. So even though the components of human-language use might not require consciousness, the fullest use of human language would. ------------ > [W]ould such a machine have to be "creative"? And if so, how would >we measure the machine's creativity? (Apologies to any who've heard this before.) As an artist in several art forms (though expert in only a couple), I use creativity as routinely and reflexively as I walk. It's no more (and no less) mysterious than walking. Basically, creativity is the combining of memes (which I define as MEMory Elements) to form more complex memes. This combining has a random element but is guided to some extent. One form of guidance involves a goal-seeking mechanism that provides a mask against which new memes are compared. Parts of the mask have don't-care attributes that can be turned on or off to make the search for a solution more or less open. Those that filter through the mask then become part of the meme-pool and can be used as components of other memes, or mutated to form yet-newer memes. A fair amount of skill is involved in selecting the right amount of meme-passing. Too little and one is over-whelmed by wild ideas; too much and you may filter out the odd but elegant solution--or the ridiculous solution that forms the root of a search that does find the solution. Skill is also involved in setting up the creative search. Most of the search is done subconsciously, but it is launched by a conscious decision. Before this is done, you must stock up on memes relevant to the problem, which includes ingesting them (via reading, talking with co-workers, watching videos or experiments, etc.) and learning them (by playing with them and through repetition making them part of long-term memory). And skill is involved in insuring that conscious activity does not interefere with the subconscious search. Part of this involves staying away from the particular problem or similar problems, and keeping from launching a second creative episode before receiving the results of the first. I see no reason, however, why the conscious mechanisms that affect creativity should have to be conscious. This is not to conclude that it doesn't enrich or support the mechanisms of consciousness. Larry @ vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov